Interview Given toGregori Yarros, Correspondent of the Associated Press Agency

November 15 (28), 1917

Interviewed:November 15 (28), 1917Published:First published in part in 1962 in the journalIstoria SSSR(History of the USSR) No. 2.

      First published in full in 1965 in the Fifth Russian Edition of theCollected Works, Vol. 54.

      Printed from the typewritten copy of the English original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      2nd English Edition,

      Progress Publishers,1965,

      Moscow,Volume 42,

      pages36b-37a.Translated:Bernard IsaacsTranscription\Markup:D. WaltersPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2002).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Inconnection with the results of the elections in
Petrograd in which the Bolsheviks won six

seats,[1]theAssociated Presscorrespondent interviewed
Lenin, the President of the Council of National Commissioners, who was
elated over the great victory of his party.

“Whatdo you think of the results of the elections to the Constituent
Assembly?” the correspondent asked.

“Ithink that these elections have proved a great victory for the
Bolshevik Party. The number of votes cast for it in the elections in May,
August and in September is constantly

growing.[2]To get six seats out of twelve in a city in which the
bourgeoisie

(Cadets[3]) are strongest, means to win in Russia.”

“Doyou suppose that the Constituent Assembly of such composition as
the results of the elections in Petrograd indicate will sanction all the
measures of the Government of National Commissioners?”

“Yes,it will sanction, because there will be no majority, according
to your supposition, against us, and together with the left social

revolutionists[4]we shall constitute a majority in Petrograd (seven
out of twelve).”

“Whatparties will enter into the new Council of National
Commissioners?”

“Ido not know positively, but I think that only the left social
revolutionists, besides the Bolsheviks.”

[1]Thisrefers to the elections to the Constituent Assembly in the
Petrograd Electoral Area held between November 42 (25) and 14 (27),
1917. These elections, the preliminary results of which became known on
November 15 (28) and the final results the next day, gave the Bolshevik
Party 424,000 votes and 6 seats in the Constituent Assembly (out of the
twelve assigned to Petrograd); the Cadets received 247,000 votes (4 seats);
the Socialist-Revolutionaries 152,000 votes (2 seats, one of them won by
the Left S.R.s).

Theterms “President of the Council of National
Commissioners” and “Social Revolutionists” used by the correspondent are
better known as “Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars” and
“Socialist-Revolutionaries”.

[2]Atthe elections to the district councils of Petrograd held at the end
of May and beginning of June 1917 the Bolshevik tickets received 20 per
cent of the votes. At the elections to the City Council of Petrograd on
August 20 (September 2) the Bolsheviks received 33 per cent of all the
votes. In speaking of the September elections Lenin was probably referring
to the elections to the district councils of Moscow (held on September 24
(October 71, 1917) at which the Bolsheviks received 51 per cent of all the
votes. This voting, Lenin pointed out, “is in general one of the most
striking symptoms of the profound change which has taken place in the mood
of the whole nation” (see present edition, Vol. 26, p. 80).

[3]Cadets—members of the Constitutional-Democratic Party, the
chief party of the big bourgeoisie in Russia. Founded in October 1905.

[4]Socialist-Revolutionaries(S.R.s)—a petty-bourgeois party
formed in Russia at the end of 1901 and beginning of 1902. After the
victory of the bourgeois-democratic revolution of February 1917 the S.R.s,
together with the Mensheviks and Cadets, were the mainstay of the bourgeois
Provisional Government.

Atthe end of November 1917 the Left wing of the party
founded a separate Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party. The Left S.R.s
formally recognised the Soviet Government and entered into an agreement
with the Bolsheviks, but very soon turned against Soviet power.